GB Olympic Team boxer Nicola Adams hopes her 17-year journey will culminate in a gold medal at London 2012. Photograph: Gary Calton

You can hear it in our voices; in the energised, excitable banter between us – and in the venom of the lash and crackle of skipping ropes smacking the gym floor. London 2012 is less than a month away and our gym at the English Institute of Sport (EIS) in Sheffield is buzzing. And I'm not just talking about the 10 Team GB boxers who are lucky enough to be fighting at the Olympics, but the coaches, doctors, physios and admin staff too. It's like downing a triple shot of espresso every time you walk in there.

Suddenly it's all starting to hit home. I went to the torch relay in Sheffield last week and there were 20,000 people present – just to see a flame! We also had a family day last week, where relatives were invited to EIS to talk about the Olympics, meet our team-mates and watch us go through our paces.

During the 18 months I've trained full-time with the squad, I've become accustomed to our coaches' thoroughness and amazing attention to detail. Our video analysis guys have recorded footage of all our potential future opponents so we can work on strategies to beat them, and when we were in China our nutritionalist even brought special meals across for us because the meat over there contains hormones that could cause us to fail a drugs test. That attention to detail was again in evidence at the family day , as all our families were invited, and everyone got signed T-shirts of all the Olympians as well as union flags with our names on them.

Our families know what we've had to go through to make the squad, and especially the years of slog and toil. They've funded all our kit and gym fees back when there was no centralised programme. And they've bitten their lips when we've been moody and tired. I started training when I was 12, and it's been a 17-year journey to get to these Games, so I was delighted that my mum and brother were able to watch me at my workplace.

Training is going really well. After taking a week off after winning silver at the world championships in China in May, I've been working back up to my peak. I feel myself getting sharper and fitter with every passing week, but I wouldn't necessarily believe the boxers who spend the build-up to a big fight loudly proclaiming that they have trained far harder, longer and better than ever before. Of course I'm working incredibly hard, but we are treating this like a normal big tournament. You've got to make sure you don't overtrain and leave your best in the gym. What I've done in the past has served me well, so I'm not reinventing the wheel just because it's the Olympics. The moment you try to go a couple of extra steps further is when things start to go wrong.

It's still pretty full-on, mind. We're up running the hills or on the track first thing and training all day in the gym from Monday to Thursday before doing some extra work on our own. And we're not holding back. You can't really worry about injuries, they're part of the game and if you have concerns about them you're probably more likely to get injured, It's just one of those things – if it's going to happen, it's going to happen. Fingers crossed, everybody in the squad is looking great at the moment.

The fact that I've won so many medals in tournaments over the years makes me naturally confident that I'm going to do myself justice next month – as does fighting in front of 10,000 home fans. So I might as well be honest: I'm aiming for a gold medal. That is what I've set my sights on, and that's what I'm determined to achieve.

Even so, it's gratifying that so many of the coaches are also telling me I can go all the way. If they really believe in me, then why shouldn't I too? It's really given me the world of confidence.

That said, confidence means nothing when you've got someone across the ring trying to punch your lights out. Once you get through those ropes, nobody else can help you, although your skills certainly can. I remember what Team GB performance director Robert McCracken once told me when I boxed a really strong girl from Ukraine. "What's the point of having the power to knock the house down if you can't hit the house?" he said. And he was right. I kept jabbing and moving all night and she barely laid a glove on me. As a blueprint for London 2012, I could do a lot worse.